1. Improving public accessibility and user engagement
Laura Watson-Heard and Mark Burley
DWP, Client Statistics
May 2018

2. Aims and Contents
Aims: To explain how we understood our different users’ needs and have developed different ways of releasing statistics; in particular interactive statistics visualisations.
Contents:
Understanding our users
DWP Stats – different approaches to releasing statistics
Developing our visualisations
Challenges
Next steps

3. DWP statistics One of the largest producers of Official Statistics
Our data sources are mostly administrative data designed for operational purposes

4. How do we understand our users?
Series of user-testing sessions - how well do DWP statistics meet the needs of our users.
12 volunteers - complete a number of ‘information retrieval’ tasks using our statistics pages on gov.uk.
Used specialist equipment to record participants’ on-screen actions and facial responses.
Encouraged to think out loud - understand why they were doing things in a particular way.

5. User engagement – practical example: results
The Good...
the Bad…
and the Baffling…
There’s a lot of useful stuff in here
Oh no… I can’t look through all this
Where’s the data?
That was dead easy to find…3 clicks
Well… that’s not obvious is it?
Is this the latest one?
This page is better than just using Google
Why isn’t it in the search results?
Am I in the right place?
It took an average of 8.5 clicks to find requested information. If they had followed shortest path – fewer than 4 clicks.
Outcome: Used the evidence to identify and prioritise improvements to our statistics.
E.g. a new theme-based approach for finding statistics, to replace A-Z search

6. Who are our different users?
The ONS has carried out extensive research into its online users. They identified these broad user-types, each with a different set of requirements:
Inquiring citizen – “I want simply worded high level summaries”
Information Forager – “I need just enough data to help me make informed decisions”
Expert user – “I want to create my own data and have it in a format that suits me”

7. DWP statistics – a layered approach

8. How did we create our interactive visualisations?
Developed a standard template similar to the static version using HTML and CSS.
Initially data was hard coded in JSON format and manipulated using a combination of D3, C3 and JQuery
D3 is an open source Javascript library which binds objects to data e.g. charts and maps
C3 is a D3 based chart library
Dashboards now starting to use Stat-Xplore API

9. Interactive web visualisations
A new way to explore DWP statistics:
High-level summaries
Point and click for detail
Interactive charts and text
Mobile responsive
Interactive maps
Responsive text and stats
“There were 5,048 NINo registrations from Canada, in 2016”
Click charts for
more detail
Dropdown data selections

10. How did we make our dashboards accessible?
Accessible on a variety of different devices
Developed using Bootstrap
Format developed to conform to accessibility requirements

11. What challenges did we face?
Steep learning curve to pick up new coding languages
Dashboards currently hosted on Heroku due to restrictions on other platforms
Currently working with Data Engineers to ensure dashboards meet GDS/GOV.UK standards

12. But it doesn’t end there…
We continue to seek feedback from our users, through various and new routes:
Formal consultation exercises e.g. UC Official Statistics consultation at the end of 2017;
Google Analytics data;
Stat-Xplore user logs;
Surveys
These activities continue to shape our services, from helping us to decide what UC stats need developing with priority, where training on using Stat-Xplore is needed, and where we can make efficiencies by reducing the frequency of publications.

13. Next steps in transformation
Develop more interactive stats visualisations, and look to develop our first fully interactive stats release.
Test “automated statistics publication” tools and techniques.

14. Reference
Please see the links below to access DWP statistics interactive dashboards